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In our emails, sent once or twice a week, you'll receive:
• alerts on new threats to Washington's environment
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• updates on the decisions that impact our environment
• resources to help you create a cleaner, greener future

Updates

Alliance Launched To Save Bees

Sixty-five chefs, restaurant owners and other culinary leaders joined us to launch the Bee Friendly Food Alliance. Through the Alliance, chefs and restaurateurs are calling attention to the importance of bees to our food supply, the dramatic die-off of bee populations, and the need to protect our pollinators. LEARN MORE.

A gray whale that washed up on a Puget Sound beach last year has become Exhibit A in the debate over whether to ban plastic bags in Seattle. Environmentalists point to the contents of the dead whale's stomach, itemized in a necropsy, as a compelling argument that the thin-film carryout shopping bags should be outlawed. The inedible trash that the whale had ingested included sweatpants, a golf ball, surgical gloves, small towels and more than 20 plastic bags.

"We all remember the beached grey whale found dead in West Seattle last year with 20 plastic bags in its stomach," O'Brian said in a press release. "The problem plastics pose for the Sound and ocean is pervasive and alarming."

Some environmental activists see bans like the ones in Bellingham and Edmonds as bringing more benefits than the more nuanced approach Seattle tried originally. Certainly, to the public, a ban may sound more reasonable.